The present invention relates to block matching motion estimation coding, and more particularly, to adaptive ways of performing block matching motion estimation to save computation power.
Modern video coding techniques utilize predictive coding for coding frames of a video. One of the most common techniques is block-based motion estimation coding. When a current macroblock of a frame is being coded, data from previous frames/macroblocks are searched to find a best match for the current macroblock.
Motion estimation is complex, however, and can consume more than 90% of computation and power of the encoding process. Methods for reducing the computation complexity for motion estimation are therefore essential for future development of encoding systems.